Simon Martin is an ex-pat Brit miler and 5k specialist living in Boulder, CO. He is world champion in masters cross-country and a fomer Colorado Runner of the Year who is still pursuing a superfast mile.
Site title comes from the great Olympic champion Emil Zatopek, who said: "A runner must run with dreams in his heart".

Thursday, August 17

How not to run a mile race

5th in 5:14. Not what I wanted, but not too bad.

It all went a bit wrong.... I went out too fast and three of them sat on me for the first 400m. (Picture shows me going to the front right from the gun.) I had to practically start jogging to get anyone to come past me. When they did, I was trying to recover and settle in when at 800 metres ex-Olympian Colleen De Reuck looked round at us all and then attacked. I had nothing left and just had to hang on.

Scott Hajicek (51), a demon trail runner and 2:45 marathoner, passed Colleen to win in 5:05 (he is the white-haired bloke in the white vest about four runners behind me in the picture); Colleen ran 5:08; Kyle Hubbart (50 -- he won the 2-mile Sunrise Stampede in June in 11:08), got third; then Patty Murray, a former NCAA 10,000m Champion and Olympic Trials marathon qualifier, came hurtling past in the last 150m.

So.. I am not happy that I got so caught up with what Bobby McGee calls the "need to frantically reach for performance" that I lost awareness of the important stuff like rhythm, form, cadence, breathing and so on. Everything that would have let me be fully present.

Funnily enough I had worked out that 5:14 would probably win it, but this year's race was faster! Gabino said the big mistake was the start and that if I hadn't been the rabbit for the first 400 I would have had a better race; it's a question of experience. Because I was out front too early I never got settled in, and I switched to desperate survival mode.